Author Granted Copyright Over Book With AI-Generated Text - With a Twist 41
The U.S. Copyright Office has granted a copyright registration to Elisa Shupe, a retired U.S. Army veteran, for her novel "AI Machinations: Tangled Webs and Typed Words," which extensively used OpenAI's ChatGPT in its creation. The registration is among the first for creative works incorporating AI-generated text, but with a significant caveat - Shupe is considered the author of the "selection, coordination, and arrangement" of the AI-generated content, not the text itself.
Shupe, who writes under the pen name Ellen Rae, initially filed for copyright in October 2022, seeking an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) exemption due to her cognitive impairments. The Copyright Office rejected her application but later granted the limited copyright after Shupe appealed. The decision, as Wired points out, highlights the agency's struggle to define authorship in the age of AI and the nuances of copyright protection for AI-assisted works.
Shupe, who writes under the pen name Ellen Rae, initially filed for copyright in October 2022, seeking an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) exemption due to her cognitive impairments. The Copyright Office rejected her application but later granted the limited copyright after Shupe appealed. The decision, as Wired points out, highlights the agency's struggle to define authorship in the age of AI and the nuances of copyright protection for AI-assisted works.
Cue all the people acting shocked about this... (Score:5, Informative)
... when the original ruling itself plainly said that though the generated content itself isn't copyrightable, human creative action such as postprocessing or selection can render it copyrightable.
I still think the basic ruling was bad for a number of reasons, and it'll increasingly come under stress in the coming years. But there is zero shock to this copyright here. The copyright office basically invited people to do this.
Re:Cue all the people acting shocked about this... (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't it roughly the same rules that phone books ran under? Couldn't copyright the (public) content, but the layout etc. could be?
Re: (Score:2)
Yep.
Re:Cue all the people acting shocked about this... (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't it roughly the same rules that phone books ran under? Couldn't copyright the (public) content, but the layout etc. could be?
Also basically same rules as performances of classical music. That musical group's specific performance (i.e., selection, coordination, arrangement, etc.) is what they hold copyright on, not the music itself.
Re:Cue all the people acting shocked about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
As for why I think the ruling was bad: their argument was that because the person doesn't control the exact details of the composition of the work, than the basic work (before postprocessing or selection) can't be copyrighted. But that exact same thing applies to photography, outside of studio conditions. Ansel Adams wasn't out there going, "Okay, put a 20 meter oak over there, a 50 meter spruce over there, shape that mountain ridge a bit steeper, put a cliff on that side, cover the whole thing with snow... now add a rainbow to the sky... okay, cue the geese!" He was searching the search space for something to match a general vision - or just taking advantage of happenstance findings. And sure, a photographer has many options at their hands in terms of their camera and its settings, but if you think that's a lot, try messing around with AUTOMATIC1111 with all of its plugins some time.
The winner of Nature Photographer of the year in 2022 was Dmitry Kokh, with "House of Bears". He was stranded on a remote Russian archipelago and discovered that polar bears had moved into an abandoned weather station, and took photos of them. He didn't even plan to be there then. He certainly didn't plan on having polar bears in an abandoned weather station, and he CERTAINLY wasn't telling the bears where to stand and how to pose. Yet his work is a classic example of what the copyright office thinks should be a copyrightable work.
And the very notion that people don't control the layout with AI art is itself flawed. It was an obsolete notion even when they made their ruling - we already had img2img, instructpix2pix and controlnet. The author CAN control the layout, down to whatever level of intricate detail they choose. Unlike, say, a nature photographer. And modern models give increasing levels of control even with the prompt itself - with SD3 (unlike SD1/2 or SC) - you can do things like "A red sphere on a blue cube to the left of a green cone" . We're heading to - if not there already - where you could write a veritable short story's worth of detail to describe a scene.
I find it just plain silly that Person A could grab their cell phone and spend 2 seconds snapping a photo of whatever happens to be out their window, and that's copyrightable, but a person who spends hours searching through the latent space - let alone with ControlNet guidance (controlnet inputs can be veritable works of art in their own right) - isn't given the same credit for the amount of creative effort put into the work.
I think, rather, it's very simple: the human creative effort should be judged not on the output of the work (the work is just a transformation of the inputs), but the amount of creative effort they put into said inputs. Not just on the backend side - selection, postprocessing, etc - but on the frontend side as well. If a person just writes "a fluffy dog" and takes the first pic that comes up, obviously, that's not sufficient creative endeavour. But if a person spends hours on the frontend in order to get the sort of image they want, why shouldn't that frontend work count? Seems dumb to me.
Re: Cue all the people acting shocked about this.. (Score:1)
You also appear to need reference to the sweat of the brow doctrine and its inapplicability in modern copyright law.
Re: (Score:3)
I accurately represented their argument. You did not.
I'll repeat: their argument was entirely focused on how the user doesn't control the exact details of the composition of AI works.
I literally read it. Don't gaslight me.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
"In the Office's view, it is well-established that copyright can protect only m
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The phrase "creative control" in your quotation is not what you think it is. The Copyright Office would not consider your control over the "rhyming pattern, words in each line, and
Re: (Score:2)
Under your (directly contradicting their words) theory, then creative endeavour on the front end SHOULD count If the person writes a veritable short-story as the prompt, then that SHOULD count. It does not. Because according to the copyright office, while user controls the general theme, they do not control the specific details.
"Instead, these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist—they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how tho
Re: (Score:2)
"While some prompts may be sufficiently creative to be protected by copyright, that does not mean that material generated from a copyrightable prompt is itself copyrightable."
Again, control is not the issue. A fixed expression of creativity is. Did you start practicing IP law in the in
Re: (Score:2)
It's the phone book or recipe book copyright. The contents of the book (the phone numbers, the recipes, etc) are not copyrightable. However, how those phone numbers and recipes are laid out, that can have copyright.
But you're just as free to take those recipes and put it on your w
Re: Cue all the people acting shocked about this. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes and no. There's a great youtube video which eludes me know of a professional photographer and some random shmuck with a phone being sent to the same place and then seeing what the results were, and ultimately they couldn't be more different. If you've ever tried to photograph animals you'll know it's not the animals or luck that would win you a contest, it's the perseverance in getting the perfect shot. The people who attribute it to luck don't see the thousands of photos that get deleted or the hours s
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, photographs shouldn't be copyrightable either.
Those most shocked... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm so confused. Does this mean I have the right to copy the generated content, but not the prompts used to generate it?
AI Incest (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, "you've been told" that by people who have no clue what they're talking about. Meanwhile, models just keep getting better and better. AI images have been out for years now. There's tons on the net.
First off, old datasets don't just disappear. So the *very worst case* is that you just keep developing your new models on pre-AI datasets.
Secondly, there is human selection on things that get posted. If humans don't like the look of something, they don't post it. In many regards, an AI image is replacin
Re: (Score:3)
Judging by the AI-generated spam sites out there, this is not true at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I would add that while the first generation LLM's were trained on crowdsourced data from the web, as LLM's have more real-world applications they will learn from the data they observe in their own "first-person" experience. Like how Telsa uploads training data from cars using FSD (misnomer that it is).
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds a bit like photographs... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm... Sounds a lot like how a photograph still gets copyright. The photographer, even if they take hundreds of photos, choses the camera, timing, lighting, lens, any after-effects, etc... This is judged enough to get copyright.
Now, the guy who had his camera grabbed by an ape, who then took a selfie with it, doesn't get copyright, because it wasn't intentional. Oddly enough if he'd handed the camera over, he probably would have. Note: Court case may have been appealed or whatever since.
If you're using something like ChatGPT in an "active" fashion, in that you're reviewing the output, adjusting your request, editing the text, and such to improve the presentation, well, same sort of thing, I think. It's like taking a piece of stone or wood, and changing up what you carve out of it depending on how the stone works out.
And yes "selection, coordination, and arrangement" sounds a bit right to be enough for copyright. She might not be able to copyright a given sentence spat out by ChatGPT, but the entire work, yes.
It's like how paint colors aren't really copyrightable, but a painting is. The word "word" isn't copyrightable, but technically I could claim copyright on this post.
Re: (Score:2)
The guy with the ape selfie made one mistake: He tried to *register* the copyright. If he had just claimed an un-registered copyright, he could still have sued anybody who tried to copy the photo, and the threat of a lawsuit would probably have been enough to keep most at bay. He might have lost in court, but most cases never get that far.
Re: Sounds a bit like photographs... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are correct, thanks for clarifying.
However, you *can* still sue for actual damages, or statutory damages, or request injunctive relief, without a registration.
Not even a little surprising (Score:2)
Duh. My work doesn't lose it's copyright because I used public domain contents in it. As long as it's transformative, you'll all good.
What about AI used in movie production? (Score:3)
At some point this will have to be the case for all AI usage. Imagine the Hollywood movie with a scene or character created by AI. That portion of the movie would not be copyrightable as interpreted today and as much as I hate Hollywood, that make very little sense.
Re: (Score:2)
The same principle applies. That AI-generated component might not be copyrightable, but the larger movie still would be, because the movie itself was not entirely dreamed up and produced by AI. The copyright office granted this woman a copyright for the curation, but not for the AI-generated text itself.
I Wonder (Score:3)
If the AI-generated text libels a REAL human being ... who can the REAL human being sue in Court?
https://legaldictionary.net/li... [legaldictionary.net]
Consider the facts as we know them right now:
- The human involved in the copyright is only liable for "selection, coordination, and arrangement" per TFS.
- AI generated the text, per TFS.
So it might take some legal hoop jumping to implicate the human involved in the copyright in the lawsuit using the argument that that human selected the maligning text.
AI generated stuff... (Score:3)
...should NOT be accepted for copyrights, patents or trademarks
We need LESS IP laws, not more
Before you burn her down... (Score:3)
The Office granted what has been granted to "editors" for; since the first copyright law was penned by Queen Anne in 1710 starting the trash/nightmare/steal-from-public-right trash it has always been.
I hope this kills copyright (Score:2)
Humanity created plenty of beautiful, wonderful things before governments got into the business of protecting the rights of authors and creators.
Creators will still create stuff, I have no doubt.
Re: (Score:1)
Copyright does have a socially valuable utility. The problem is that our laws over value that utility by a lot. Like way, way, way too much. Something, something regulatory capture.
Fourty years ago... (Score:2)
"The registration is among the first for creative works incorporating AI-generated text..."
Glad they said "among the first" instead of some thrilling this-is-unprecedented malarkey.
"The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed" Warner Books 1984. ISBN 0-446-38051-2.
Where would a Guide to Using AI Fall? (Score:2)
That's what I want to know. Where would such a guide, with illustrative examples, fall in this quagmire of IP management? Surely the use (and understanding) of AI prompts will become more and more important as time goes by. Somebody somewhere is going to write a guide (if there aren't a slew of them already). How much of said guide will be subject to copyright and who gets the revenue?
What's the Point? (Score:1)
Or, to put it another way, why should anyone buy a book when they can just generate one for themselves and become THE world-renowned expert overnight?
You though social media made you a genius! Just think how this new wave of AI is gonna make you that much smarterer and betterer than everyone else!
Maybe Brawdo isn't an actual beverage. Maybe it's a metaphor for any pablum that dulls people's critical reasoning and seduces them into populi